jdk7u-dev OPENJDK build fails

[Chris Hegarty]

On 28/10/2011 10:10, Florian Weimer wrote:
> ....
>
> This seems to be a bit backwards to me.  If hardly anyone notices that
> the forest doesn't build, it suggests that nobody is used it for
> development.  Perhaps it would be possible to work with a single forest
> and freeze it periodically when it's being stabilized for a release?

Good point. It would be interesting to see how many fixes were pushed 
into 7u-dev since 7u2 was branched off.

One of most frustrating issues we've had to deal with over the past 
number of years working with different releases, is the fact that there 
has not always been an open repository available to push changes to. 
This results in different versions of changes in old repositories lying 
around on a developers workstation until the magical date when the 
repository becomes open again. You need to re-familiarize yourself with 
the issue, possibly code review (again), and retest.

I think (but I could be wrong) that the jdk7 Update project wants to 
avoid this issue by always having an integration repository open. I 
really like this approach, even given this recent problem. I just think 
it should always be in a reasonable state (at least buildable).

I think anyone working with the jdk7u-dev forest is probably hacking 
around the build issue right now. Maybe even applying the 7u2 fix 
temporarily just to be able to build. At least, that's what I I've been 
doing, after wasting time to determine the cause of the failure.

Anyway, I think this points to a process issue that should be put on the 
table before the next stabilization branch.

-Chris.